Nerd Scientists
by Aya-kun Rose
Summary: Bruce and Tony's little project gets its name. Just a flippant lil' thing that takes place before the start of Age of Ultron. Spoilers for same.


Imagine, if you will, Bruce Banner holed up in the new Avengers Tower, his hair a mess from two days of running his hands through it in frustration, blue light from the holo-screens sinking into the creases in his forehead and throwing his five-o'clock shadow into neon relief.

He blinks at the data scrawling and swirling through the digital ether. Blinks again. Swipes a chunk of schematic over from another screen. Twists it. Blinks. Smiles. No, no, wait, that's a scowl. He tosses that chuck into a digital trash can as if it were a basketball. He misses.

Bruce puts both his hands through his neurotic curls and turns his back on the screen. He paces. He snags a coffee mug from a desk, a white thing with red and blue stripes. When he lifts it, hey, yeah, that's Cap's face beaming liberty and justice for all from the other side.

It doesn't get to his lips. " _Eureka_ " written all over his face, the doctor whirls back to the screen, reaching bodily to piece together the solution that has eluded him for the better part of a week.

He stops.

His display of graceful formulas have been stamped out by a single, blocky word. It flashes, strobe-like, hyper-aware of its own importance, and then Tony Stark swaggers through the screen with his arms out and a serious grin twitching above his goatee.

"ULTRON," he announces, in case the full screen display weren't announcement enough. "What do you think?"

Bruce blinks. He blinks long and hard, his eyes scrunched up tight and his hand still outstretched towards – what was he reaching for again?

Tony takes his hand and gives it a firm, deal-made handshake. "It's cool, right? Thought I'd run that by you before jetting off. Cap says he's got trouble on the Canadian border with terrorists – wait that can't be right. Do they even _have_ terror in the Great White North?"

Bruce comes back to himself as Tony breezes across the lab floor towards the jutting airpad. He puts the mug back down on a pile of IBM manuals (he's pretty sure Tony keeps those around just to be ironic) and follows a few steps in Tony's direction. "Ultron?" Bruce asks.

Tony's look insinuates that Banner might be a little slow. "Ultron," he repeats, again opening his arms to encompass the semi-circle of screens hemming them in. "Our project. I named it. Ultron."

He shrugs: How is this so hard to understand?

Bruce _understands_ , he just isn't _convinced_. He glances over to the flashing screen. Squints painfully. It's a grimace, really. He takes off his glasses and folds them carefully, turning back to Tony who's now halfway out the room.

"I don't know, isn't it a little, uh," he calls. His open hand offers eloquent circles to describe the word he can't find.

"Awesomesauce?" Tony guesses, holding his own hand out for the suit to start assembling around him. "Yeah, you bet your fat green ass it is."

Bruce pretends he didn't hear that. He folds up his arms like he did his glasses, the frames of which he taps against his chin. "No, I was thinking more along the lines of, what, tacky?"

Tony slaps his metallic chest as the servos lock the piece in with the rest. "You're killing me, Banner. You know about my heart condition."

Bruce shrugs. "I don't know, Tony, this is an important project. A _really_ important project. You don't think that name's a little … pulp sci-fi? A little comic booky?"

Tony blinks. Then the golden faceplate swoops in and locks him into the suit nice and snug. The eye screens flicker blue. "Have you been out lately, Banner? No, of course not, my bad. Don't be alarmed, but I'm about to fly out this window like a beautiful metal parakeet to go help a twenty-five-year-old World War Two vet punch a polar bear in the mouth so yeah. I don't really see what your objection is."

Bruce ducks his head, holding up one hand in surrender. "Fair enough, fair enough. Ultron it is."

"Hey if it helps sell it, I'll have Pepper sic the PR team on it," Tony says. "Run it by some test groups, print up some demographic charts, whip out some promotional t-shirts with our faces on them – or, no, better yet, those little rubber wristbands everyone loves to collect–"

"Okay, okay, fine, whatever, leave Ultron to me. Don't you have a species to endanger?"

"Polar bears aren't endangered, they're vulnerable. Educate yourself." Tony, in full red-and-gold regalia, exits onto the pad. His filtered voice switches to one of the comm terminals. "Stay cool, big buddy, we'll be back before you know it."

"Don't forget to call if you need me," is something Bruce would have liked to say, if he were capable of meaning it. He stutters through "Have fun," instead.

"You too," Tony replies, his involvement in the current conversation having plummeted to about .12% now that flight-and-fight protocols are spooling up in his brain. "Oh, and J.A.R.V.I.S., give the good doctor his screen back, will ya?"

"Right away, sir."

"Thanks," Bruce says, glancing over his shoulder as the flashing ULTRON extravaganza blinks out and his data blinks back. The faint whine of the arc reactors cuts in and Bruce blinks back, too, to see Iron Man arcing a trail of repulsor exhaust across the Manhattan skyline.

Bruce slips his glasses on. Slouches over to the screens. Squints over the scrolling, swirling data. He hefts the mug and wraps his hands around it, musing a second or two before barking a defeated laugh.

"I have no idea what I was doing here," he shakes his head. "Ultron!"

"I'm sorry, Dr. Banner," replies J.A.R.V.I.S. from the same terminal.

Bruce waves the ghostly voice off. "No need to apologize for Tony,"

"It was never my intention to apologize for Mr. Stark," J.A.R.V.I.S. corrects, "I merely wished to inform you that you finished your coffee two days ago."

"What? Oh." Bruce looks down into his mug and blinks at the stain crusted to the bottom. "Right. Well. I really do need to get out more."

* * *

Trouble on the Canadian border translates into a full on skirmish with a Hydra cell that quickly escalates into a Code Green. Who knew you could fit such a large clandestine terrorist arsenal behind Niagara Falls?

"Not parakeet; eagle! I should have said 'a beautiful metal eagle.' Just for you, Cap," Iron Man's saying while taking a swan dive off the falls.

Captain America doesn't have time to do a double-take, slammed against the railing of the scenic overlook, hunched behind the shield as it takes a barrage of fire. "I have no idea what you're talking about, Stark," he bites out. A lull in the shooting gives him the opportunity to hurl the shield at his assailants, throwing himself into a forward roll that takes him precisely to the end point of the shield's ricochet. "And, frankly, I don't think I want to."

The Hulk can't hear any of this, not plugged into the comms, but the sound of him leaving a crater in the pavement where he lands would have drowned it all out anyway.

He snarls, rising to his full height, and swings his head around looking for the next thing to smash. Something catches his eye –

"You all right there, big guy?" Black Widow's vaulted an overturned car and has skidded to a halt among the rubble opposite the Hulk.

Iron Man banks sharply up from his dive, firing a double blast from his palms into the mysterious recesses behind the thundering torrent. The resulting explosion is hardly audible; water beats fire. "Something wrong with our jolly green giant?"

"No – I don't know. He's just standing there. I think he's … it looks like he's checking himself out in a store window?" She cautiously circles, trying to get a good angle on what could be a delicate situation.

He catches the movement in the storefront reflection, turns and bellows. "DO PANTS MAKE HULK ASS LOOK FAT!?"


End file.
